


need you now

by preromantics



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, Friendship, Post-Canon, Science
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-10
Updated: 2013-11-10
Packaged: 2018-01-01 01:04:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1038503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/preromantics/pseuds/preromantics
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lydia finds it's easier to fall back into the past than she thought; and this time around there seems to be more perks.</p>
            </blockquote>





	need you now

**Author's Note:**

  * For [](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts).



Ideally, Lydia's suitors (and, since her first year of grad school, suitettes), don't burst into locked labs shouting their need of her when she's two minutes into a complicated time-sensitive experiment proof with a hazmat suit on. (More ideally, security at the lab Lydia is working at in Oslo would have prevented any interruptions in the first place.)

"Lydia! I need you, now," does have a nice ring to it no matter how many times she's heard it, though.

Lydia blinks, once, and pauses for one crucial second to pin point her focus on the spinning apparatus in front of her again post-door slamming open.

"Whoever you are," Lydia says, (sparing a brief thought to hope it isn't Jane -- that ended badly -- or, god forbid, David -- that ended even worse,) and an absent hand wave when she sets a beaker down. "You'll just have to need me in twenty minutes, after I prove an entire field of mathematicians wrong. Even if this is an emergency."

"You're doing... math?"

Through her tunnel-vision focus and slightly fuzzy hearing under the hazmat suit, Lydia almost recognizes the voice. Her hand stills.

"That's not important," says the person, interrupter-er, suitor, sounding frustrated. "Seriously, Lydia, everyone's life is in danger. Peter is here, and he's --"

Lydia spins around, Field's metal be dammed. "Allison?"

Allison is, in fact, standing in the previously bolted shut doorway to the lab. Allison who Lydia hasn't seen in five or more years. Allison with half of her ponytail out around her face and wearing a skin-tight black jumpsuit that Lydia is impressed she completely pulls off.

"Hi," Allison says, drawing it out and looking sheepish for a small moment. "Seriously though, I need you. You're the only one who can help now."

"I --" Lydia starts, but finds herself following the commanding line of Allison's back as she turns and exits the lab. "If this is one of those _things_ ," Lydia says, just managing to not sound shrill, "I can't help, I'm not involved anymore."

Allison turns in place by Lydia's desk outside the lab and hands her her high heels for Lydia to swap out for her sterile hazmat slippers.

"Allison," Lydia says, "Allison, you know I can't help you. I'm out."

Allison waves her shoes a little. "You'll need these."

"Allison."

"Peter -- what was left of him -- found a lab here in Oslo that could help him," Allison says. There's something hard in her eyes that even on their worst adventures together in their late teens was never there and it makes Lydia snatch her shoes from Allison's grip.

"What's the plan?" Lydia asks, rolling off her hazmat gear and stepping into her heels before she can think twice.

"We eliminate the threat," Allison says.

Lydia looks at her lab, and then at Allison's now retreating back. "Fuck," she says, exhales it on a low breath.

-

Allison's makeshift HQ is a tiny hotel room in the city center.

"Just you?" Lydia asks. The unspoken part is understood: just you left?

"After what happened, you know, we made it a rule that anyone related to a target or suspect couldn't be involved on a lead. And everyone else is already on a case."

Lydia snorts in an unflattering way. "So the whole save-the-world supernatural versus human peace keeping thing is still happening."

Allison's lips thin into a line. "Yeah. We're good at it."

Lydia hums, glances at the guns and tools laid out on Allison's hotel bed.

"Peter is going to expose himself," Allison says. "And we have a day or two, at most."

Lydia sighs and can practically feel the resistance melt physically out of her bones as she switches her mindset over into this-is-happening mode. "The quicker we get started, the quicker I can be done with this little blast from the past."

"Great," Allison says, disarmingly genuine about it.

-

It's almost scary to Lydia how easy it is to get back into the rhythm of working next to Allison on something.

She pushes her thought on her own lack of unease aside to explore later, studies charts and information and files and plants next to Allison like she never stopped doing it, the crazy and thankless job of saving people who didn't even know they needed to be saved from monsters they didn't even know existed.

A few solid hours of nonstop research is basically a muscle memory function for Lydia, so she spends more time than she really should paying more attention to Allison and how she's changed (how her hair falls into her face even though she's pinned it back, how she bites her bottom lip when she feels stuck on something and licks it when she's found something helpful) than she does connecting the points laid out in front of her.

When Lydia does pay attention she finds out over the course of a few hours that she knows a few of the people involved in Peter's weird DNA enhancing over his head world domination plan as her colleagues in Oslo. They're all dicks, though, and constantly underestimate her, so she doesn't feel too shocked.

She also finds out the easiest way to stop Peter is with a venomous anti-serum

"Can you do it?" Allison asks after Lydia explains.

"It's not like I have one of my PHds in molecular biology -- yet -- but, yes. We have to go to the lab."

Allison practically beams at her. Lydia tries not to stare.

-

Lydia remembers the long frustrating hours spent years ago with everyone at their wit's end, trying to fix too many problems at once and hitting every dead end imaginable.

She remembers how frustrating it was to argue with her best friends, to not feel valued enough, to just want to sleep and stop worrying someone might not make it back from whatever slapped together plan they'd figured out next.

She remembers being stuck and, against all rationality, scared and annoyed at her friends and Beacon Hills and the awful nightmare stuff of fairy tales.

Lydia doesn't remember any of what she devoted her high school and early college years to being so efficient or easy, when it came to the end.

Allison shoots the correctly simulated anti-serum from a distance at Peter with perfect precision and they wait to watch Lydia's formula work as expected. That's it. No conflict, no fear or bodily harm. Just some calls to the right people and authorities to clean up the results.

A huge and unwelcome trip to Lydia's past all for a day's work and an easy ending. If it was always like that, these days, Lydia might even -- but no.

"Well, that's done," Lydia says, the shock in her voice clear. She feels rather dazed the entire cab ride back to Allison's hotel room, even with Allison holding on to her arm and reaffirming reality with little positive comments.

Back at the hotel, reality sinks in a little more. Mainly, Lydia's wondering why she isn't already back at her apartment, washing away the déjà vu of the last two days from her skin before getting back to her research.

"You've still got it," Allison says, as Lydia watches, entranced, her un-velcroing several knives and guns from various parts of her body. "It was awesome to watch you in the lab."

"It's like a bike, right," Lydia says. She's suddenly tired, visualizing all the directions this conversation could go. She doesn't want any part of it.

"Lydia, When you're done in Oslo you should --"

"Don't," Lydia says.

Instead of talking, Lydia steps forward and helps Allison peel off her shirt and unwrap the skeletal strips of bulletproof lining and weapon hiding spots lying over her skin

Lydia's hand maybe lingers along Allison's ribs, down to her hip, her eyes at level with the swell of Allison's chest, bouncing lightly when Allison unhooks her bra and lets it fall between their feet. A grenade pin, a small pill vial, and a key all tumble out from the lining.

"Better to be safe than sorry," Allison shrugs in (unneeded) explanation.

Lydia presses her hands along the top of Allison's ribs with more intent. "I don't think I want to play it safe right now," she says, catching Allison's eye and feeling suspended in time for the second it takes Allison to surge forward and capture her lips between her own.

"Good," Allison says, heavy and humid against Lydia's jaw. "Good."

-

When they wake up the next morning, Lydia sits up against the headboard and lets the sheet pool around her feet, dragging down Allison's bare shoulder.

Allison blinks up at her and smiles sleepy and warm. It reminds Lydia of their sleepovers in high school, post-trauma or victory; Allison's hair haloed around her head and catching light in the same way it did from Lydia's childhood bedroom window.

(Maybe if Lydia had realized she could have more than poetic plays of light in her brain, back then.)

Allison joins her up at the headboard.

"I'm still not coming back," Lydia says.

Allison knocks her bare knee into Lydia's and then keeps her leg there. She hums in response, a non answer.

"I mean it, I can't. I'm respected in my field, feared by my colleagues and community, on the verge of a mathematic breakthrough involving the very fabric of _time_ , and I can't ruin that with my supernatural freakshow of a life on the side --"

Allison cuts her off, pulls her close with a hand tangled in the back of Lydia's sleep missed hair and kisses her deep and warm. They fall back under the sheets , easy and sleep-slow, and Lydia shuts her brain off for a while.

-

Lydia doesn't know what to say at the airport terminal when she drops Allison off.

Several light, joking things come to mind: how do you even get through security with what you have in that bag? or You guys don't have a private jet yet for all your secret supernatural fighting? or Call me anytime you need a ride -- anytime. Just anytime.

Allison hugs her tight, sounds positively girlish when she presses her nose into Lydia's hair and says, "Missed you."

Instead of saying anything meaningless, Lydia hugs back tightly.

"Give me your hand," Lydia says when they untangle, her mind suddenly made up.

Allison does without question, and Lydia digs a pen out of her purse to scribble her cell number on Allison's palm.

"For emergencies," Lydia explains. "Like half dead psychopaths jacked up on a super DNA cocktail."

Allison's nose crinkles a little when she smiles. "I'm hoping that was a one time occurrence."

"God, yes."

Allison wraps her long, bow and gun-rough fingers around Lydia's wrist. "What about for European booty calls?" she asks, with a silly face.

"I may or may not be back in California for a conference at the end of next month," Lydia says. "If you don't call it a booty call ever again, what are we, sixteen?"

"We have a kelpie infestation upstate you could help out with while you're home," Allison says.

"Pass," says Lydia.

Allison hooks their pinkies together. "Emergencies for now, got it."

"Emergencies," Lydia confirms.

Allison brushes her nose against Lydia's cheek and steps back with a decisive nod. "Can't miss my flight, even though I'd love to stay."

Lydia smiles. "See you soon, then," she says, surprised by the lack of dread she suddenly has about going home to California. Something similar to excitement feels like it's building outward from the points on her hands Allison's fingers touched.

Allison's answering grin, a curl of promise to her lips, is all Lydia can see or think about even long after Allison disappears in the crowd on her way to airport security.

**Author's Note:**

> Lady_match! I haven't written in months so this was actually fun to settle down (admittedly, last minute) and punch out. The science gobbedlygook is all made up, obviously. I hope you enjoyed -- I actually really loved your prompts/tastes and really wanted to do a canon-set first time fic for these two but it felt like something I'd done before. (Not that there can ever be enough!) ♥


End file.
